@Noors: I had been wondering about detail in there, I'll see how it looks when I trial some more laser/battery placements later since I haven't really played around with that yet.
I'm liking the chainsaw a lot more now I've seen the refs...though I kinda prefer the way the handle is secured on the rusty old one.
@Svdl: I'm considering the heavy rifle concepts a dead end now. I went looking for possible refs but it turns out nobody even thought about making anti-material rifles until the 80's so there's absolutely no reason for the sniper to be using one (50's to 70's was when missile tech got more development for anti-armour). A shorter rifle was part of the original idea so I'll see if there's anything interesting out there.
Your shotgun is certainly an imposing beast of a gun, although more so in third than first person in my eyes...might be the width doing that.
@Sparkwire: I'll bear that in mind, but at the moment the only non-standard configuration so far considered (bullpup) looks to be too new, as it seems it didn't see any real use til the 80's and later.
@Yamo: I'm leaning towards lighter, if only to provide more contrast with the darker sections of the gun.
I like it all. I think you might run into more problems than solutions with jiggle bones, there is only so much they can do. You could probably do a two state animation, where he carries both in one hand but whips them out so fast that you really only catch a flash that both where out. Most of the motion would be implied. HOWEVER that's getting into custom player aniamtion and that's a bit of a pain to get right.
Add me to the long list of people fawning over the chainsaw. Don't ever scrap the yellow color. My only concern with it is that I feel the concept would fit the pyro a bit better, since he's got a little slasher villain vibe to him.
No big deal, though, heavy's crazy enough and the animations are certainly more fitting.
@svdl: that is an awesome weapon, i'm interested to know what role you have it playing, as i personally think that it is too dominant for a shotgun replacement, and is almost in the primary category, both in silhouette and physical size, but there isn't a class where that gun would work as primary. :-\
Heh, that's an interesting flaw I never thought about. I made it specifically for the soldier (though it does fit the heavy as well), since I'd love for everyone who has a shotgun to have an alternate one, unique to their class, as an unlock.
@Svdl: I'm considering the heavy rifle concepts a dead end now. I went looking for possible refs but it turns out nobody even thought about making anti-material rifles until the 80's so there's absolutely no reason for the sniper to be using one (50's to 70's was when missile tech got more development for anti-armour). A shorter rifle was part of the original idea so I'll see if there's anything interesting out there.
While I'd love to see a shorter rifle, you could look into WWI-WWII era anti-tank rifles for references if you still want a large rifle. They have some interesting shapes and details, though they'rehugetothepointofbeingridiculous.
To tell you the truth I can't really see the chainsaw looking that modern. Personally I think there is a bit too much yellow however, especially on the inside bits. But apart from that I think its fine as it is.
I'm putting the sticky launcher on hold for the moment to work on something my friend came up with. He calls it the spiky spikes of stabbing, and its melee weapon for the heavy. I'm going for a simular, handmade style to the iron curtain. Still pretty WIP at the moment
I'm haven't decide whether to the rail at the top into a saw, or into something simular to the handguard on the southern hospitality. Feedback and crits welcome
Saw:
Spikes:
I like the version with a saw on it. The spike one is a bit to round. I love your work man =D
Hey Blase, good to see you got your account set up!
I've decided to go with the saw design. I've also started working on the smoothing.
I've also bulked up the wrist gaurd. I don't know whether I should add a second guard or just leave it at one. I'm currently keeping one eye on the polycount, As so far ive got 4416 tris on just a single glove, I want to have under 5000 tris on each glove. So i just want to know whether adding another guard is completely neccesary or just unnecesary detail.
Alright so after a short break, I finished modellin of my Christmas Cart. Not many changes since last time, mostly optimization (shaved off 'bout 1,5k tris), added some bolts and replaced one of the stockings with... well, guess what it is and who could hang it there Now it's got 16 449 tris. Maybe I'll also reduce the wheels, since Valve used 2k tris on them and they're not that visible anyway, could get another 1k. So basically, modelling is done, now onwards to mapping.
Also, there's lots of awesome stuff here lately, all those miniguns, chainsaw and last but not least, the BAR shotgun. I'd love to have them all in game.
Looks really nice Mad Mike though im not sure if this is aimed towards going in by valve for christmas or a personal map you are making but christmas is almost here :O!
If you mean the supplies in the fireplace and the base, they're unsmoothed now because they were taken straight from the original cart. Apart from that smoothing groups are pretty much done. Is there anything that you think should be corrected?
Yea Mad Mike, I really love the Christmas thing, but you better hurry up and texture it (submit it to valve before Christmas, hint, hint)... I think the textures will make it so much better, so do a really good job on it!
The third weapon in my Tank Division pack, The Tread Menace. Scraps of T-34 tank treads.
I made custom c_arm animations for them, to set the grip. The custom taunt uses the line "My fists... they are made of STEEL!"
Ha those tank treads are a great idea and a nice execution. I'm not too sure about those patches of paint all over them but they aren't horrible. I think they'd be better with grease/sand/dirt smudges and maybe a slightly different base color for the metal. Did you set up jigglebones on it?
Ha those tank treads are a great idea and a nice execution. I'm not too sure about those patches of paint all over them but they aren't horrible. I think they'd be better with grease/sand/dirt smudges and maybe a slightly different base color for the metal. Did you set up jigglebones on it?
@Yamo: outstanding! @mad: I was talking about the supplies, the rest is amazing @mister: I like how they look in FPview, but the world view is Brutal, menacing, I love it.
The third weapon in my Tank Division pack, The Tread Menace. Scraps of T-34 tank treads.
I made custom c_arm animations for them, to set the grip. The custom taunt uses the line "My fists... they are made of STEEL!"
What... I... how did you make custom c_arm animations?
wow awesome work you guys, everything fits the tf2 theme perfectly.
I finally had some time to work on my guitar model. I cut the tri count for 1250 to 7970 and fixed some errors. Right now I'm trying to decide which gas tank to use. Maybe you guys could help me decide :P ?
Just need to get that done and I can start unwrapping and textureing.
There's some good looking stuff on this page. I especially love the tank track gloves. @Dr.cube: I prefer the small ones, leaning towards the short.
Very much inspired by the chainsaw currently in the making here, I set out to create something for the pyro.
animation tests
It's a cordless hedge trimmer. No actual textures yet, model's also not final.
I don't think they existed back in the sixties, so I drew some inspiration from kitchen appliances of the time. I'm also not a big fan of the way I made the frontal handle, but seeing that's how the pyro's animations are, I couldn't think of a better way.
What... I... how did you make custom c_arm animations?
@misterdevious: yea seriously, please give us your arm animation secrets
I used the Superaldo animation replacement method. The one he eloquently described in his youtube video TF2 make custom animation with 3dsmax 2/2. I just applied it to c_arms. The relevant section starts at 1:48.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqm9YVKtvSE"]TF2 make custom animation with 3dsmax 2/2[/ame]
Short:
-Make a definebones file for the model that will use the animation.
-Make a copy of the original working animation file.
-Make a qc file that includes the definebones file and the original animation copy and loads your new animations on top of it.
Shortish: 1. Extract the c_heavy_animations and the c_heavy_arms from the c_models directory. Decompile them. 2. Rename the extracted c_heavy_animations file to something else like c_heavy_animations_original and place it in your models/weapons/c_models directory. 3. Make a definebones file for the c_arms. Basically, recompile the extracted c_heavy_arms, but with the definebones option. Copy the produced text, paste it into a text file, rename it sharedbones.qci, and then dig through and manually correct any errors (the errors are glaringly obvious.) 4. Tell the animation qc file to use the definebones file. This is essential for animation only files: $include "sharedbones.qci" 5. Tell the qc file to use the copied animation file for the original animations: $includemodel "weapons\c_models\c_heavy_animations_original.mdl" 6. Remark/delete out all the animations in the c_heavy_animations extracted qc file, except the ones you are going to change. Any animations that you call after the $includemodel command will be used instead of the original ones. 7. Animate. The decompiled animations are often very screwed up, but either they or the decompiled view_model animations can be used as a starting point. I don't have an easy to follow explanation for merging weapons and hands that works for all kinds of weapons yet, and even if I did, it would only work in Blender, which is what I've been using.
Edit:
I think I may have added the animations into the arm_model qc before doing the definebones recompile to be sure to get all of the bones to appear in the definebones definitions, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I remember there was some warning about non-animating bones getting optimized out (left out).
misterdevious - useful info looks like a TON of work... great job slugging through all of it and the treads look great Gonna third zip on the paint splotches - if I was heavy (yeah right) I wouldn't go through all the effort of painting it... I think it'd look more natural if you used the team colors as base colors and added scratches and dirt
dr.cube - I'll vote for small/short - when you start on the textures it might be a good idea to slightly singe the front of the guitar
edit - disregard... was using the wrong shortcut
Has anyone decompiled recently? All of a sudden using cannonfodder's mdl decompiler I'm faced with this error: "The proceedure entry point Q_AppendSlash could not be located in the dynamic link library vstdlib.dll."
That's interesting, when I tried adding a single new pose into the heavy's fists so he could his sandvich differently, it hated it and just kept the pose for whatever weapon I'd previously had equipped (refusing to load at all if I removed all other poses), and I used that exact same method a couple of months ago. Ah well maybe I'll try again if the mood strikes, thanks for that.
One reason I didn't add much small detail to the front of the treads was to hide the fact that I only painted two different treads, which are used over and over alternating and flipped. Small, noticeable/distinguishable patterns would make the repetition pretty obvious.
As to the coloration, I went with the same gray color used in the other weapons of my pack to keep some sort of cohesion, and to suggest that the parts could have originated from a single tank which was taken apart. Having reddish/bluish tinted treads seems like it might look a little strange. I've already increased the value of the paint, as anything darker was completely indistinguishable in the dark. Dark base color treads would return the team-distinguishing problem.
They have no jigglebones. It was hard enough avoiding clipping into the arms during various animations with my static treads. I had to tweak the rotations on the treads a few times as I discovered additional clipping.
Anyone know if bones do a lot to increase file size or anything? Just wondering how conservative I should be when setting up this ammo belt to jigglebone
edit: Okay another jigglebone question, according to the Valve Dev Community, jigglebones are assumed to be oriented so that Z runs along the length of the bone, but in max it seems like bones always run along X. Is there any way to change this?
Some WIP pics of a hat I made for the pyro. Model is final.
The lava uses the UnlitTwoTexture shader, which can also be seen on the level 3 dispenser's screen. This gives it a nice flow effect (I did not make a vid yet).
The volcano texture is only a place holder, I really need to make it look like the TF2 rock textures. Also, I'll add some $selfillum for the parts near lava.
Any suggestions on improving?
Should I make it paintable?
Should I try to add a smoke particle effect?
Some WIP pics of a hat I made for the pyro. Model is final.
The lava uses the UnlitTwoTexture shader, which can also be seen on the level 3 dispenser's screen. This gives it a nice flow effect (I did not make a vid yet).
The volcano texture is only a place holder, I really need to make it look like the TF2 rock textures. Also, I'll add some $selfillum for the parts near lava.
Any suggestions on improving?
Should I make it paintable?
Should I try to add a smoke particle effect?
Add a little town at the bottom with paintable roofs. :P
I agree with the small/long.
EDIT: Try adding a lava spewing particle with some smoke in there. Basically just a slightly darker blood particle and some smoke.
wow awesome work you guys, everything fits the tf2 theme perfectly.
I finally had some time to work on my guitar model. I cut the tri count for 1250 to 7970 and fixed some errors. Right now I'm trying to decide which gas tank to use. Maybe you guys could help me decide :P ?.
The small/short, it match with the size of the guitar
Some WIP pics of a hat I made for the pyro. Model is final.
The lava uses the UnlitTwoTexture shader, which can also be seen on the level 3 dispenser's screen. This gives it a nice flow effect (I did not make a vid yet).
The volcano texture is only a place holder, I really need to make it look like the TF2 rock textures. Also, I'll add some $selfillum for the parts near lava.
Any suggestions on improving?
Should I make it paintable?
Should I try to add a smoke particle effect?
Awesome idea but, I'm assuming that those textures aren't the final ones...
I dont quite like the looks of the chamfers on the actual finger things and the wires or something on them 2 rings above the handle, bit too much detail thats all.
Here's some stuff I've made recently. First up is the Watership Slips, a pair of bunny slippers for the Sniper based off Valve's holiday greeting cards from last year.
And yesterday/today I made the Sticks of Fury. Still working on the jigglebones.
Lastly, the Wet Virtuose, a paint brush for the Spy.
Valve NEEDS to put those Nunchucks in... NEEDS TO.
I would put some sort of plug where the wires enter the rings. You have it when the bottom wire enters the base, but it looks kind of weird when they go in the rings. Same goes for the wires going into the center portion from the flaps. You may also want to consider putting something where the rings hit the base, but you may be able to get away with it if you texture it right.
Replies
I'm liking the chainsaw a lot more now I've seen the refs...though I kinda prefer the way the handle is secured on the rusty old one.
@Svdl: I'm considering the heavy rifle concepts a dead end now. I went looking for possible refs but it turns out nobody even thought about making anti-material rifles until the 80's so there's absolutely no reason for the sniper to be using one (50's to 70's was when missile tech got more development for anti-armour). A shorter rifle was part of the original idea so I'll see if there's anything interesting out there.
Your shotgun is certainly an imposing beast of a gun, although more so in third than first person in my eyes...might be the width doing that.
@Sparkwire: I'll bear that in mind, but at the moment the only non-standard configuration so far considered (bullpup) looks to be too new, as it seems it didn't see any real use til the 80's and later.
@Yamo: I'm leaning towards lighter, if only to provide more contrast with the darker sections of the gun.
I like it all. I think you might run into more problems than solutions with jiggle bones, there is only so much they can do. You could probably do a two state animation, where he carries both in one hand but whips them out so fast that you really only catch a flash that both where out. Most of the motion would be implied. HOWEVER that's getting into custom player aniamtion and that's a bit of a pain to get right.
No big deal, though, heavy's crazy enough and the animations are certainly more fitting.
Heh, that's an interesting flaw I never thought about. I made it specifically for the soldier (though it does fit the heavy as well), since I'd love for everyone who has a shotgun to have an alternate one, unique to their class, as an unlock.
Anyway, glad you guys like it.
While I'd love to see a shorter rifle, you could look into WWI-WWII era anti-tank rifles for references if you still want a large rifle. They have some interesting shapes and details, though they're huge to the point of being ridiculous.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5390945&postcount=1970
I like the version with a saw on it. The spike one is a bit to round. I love your work man =D
I've decided to go with the saw design. I've also started working on the smoothing.
I've also bulked up the wrist gaurd. I don't know whether I should add a second guard or just leave it at one. I'm currently keeping one eye on the polycount, As so far ive got 4416 tris on just a single glove, I want to have under 5000 tris on each glove. So i just want to know whether adding another guard is completely neccesary or just unnecesary detail.
Also, there's lots of awesome stuff here lately, all those miniguns, chainsaw and last but not least, the BAR shotgun. I'd love to have them all in game.
Wire
Wire
Wire
I'm waiting for your criticism and advice.
edit: I'm assuming those are not the final smoothing groups...
I made custom c_arm animations for them, to set the grip. The custom taunt uses the line "My fists... they are made of STEEL!"
2nd
@mad: I was talking about the supplies, the rest is amazing
@mister: I like how they look in FPview, but the world view is Brutal, menacing, I love it.
I finally had some time to work on my guitar model. I cut the tri count for 1250 to 7970 and fixed some errors. Right now I'm trying to decide which gas tank to use. Maybe you guys could help me decide :P ?
Just need to get that done and I can start unwrapping and textureing.
@misterdevious: yea seriously, please give us your arm animation secrets
@Dr.cube: I prefer the small ones, leaning towards the short.
Very much inspired by the chainsaw currently in the making here, I set out to create something for the pyro.
animation tests
It's a cordless hedge trimmer. No actual textures yet, model's also not final.
I don't think they existed back in the sixties, so I drew some inspiration from kitchen appliances of the time. I'm also not a big fan of the way I made the frontal handle, but seeing that's how the pyro's animations are, I couldn't think of a better way.
[ame="
Short:
-Make a definebones file for the model that will use the animation.
-Make a copy of the original working animation file.
-Make a qc file that includes the definebones file and the original animation copy and loads your new animations on top of it.
Shortish:
1. Extract the c_heavy_animations and the c_heavy_arms from the c_models directory. Decompile them.
2. Rename the extracted c_heavy_animations file to something else like c_heavy_animations_original and place it in your models/weapons/c_models directory.
3. Make a definebones file for the c_arms. Basically, recompile the extracted c_heavy_arms, but with the definebones option. Copy the produced text, paste it into a text file, rename it sharedbones.qci, and then dig through and manually correct any errors (the errors are glaringly obvious.)
4. Tell the animation qc file to use the definebones file. This is essential for animation only files: $include "sharedbones.qci"
5. Tell the qc file to use the copied animation file for the original animations: $includemodel "weapons\c_models\c_heavy_animations_original.mdl"
6. Remark/delete out all the animations in the c_heavy_animations extracted qc file, except the ones you are going to change. Any animations that you call after the $includemodel command will be used instead of the original ones.
7. Animate. The decompiled animations are often very screwed up, but either they or the decompiled view_model animations can be used as a starting point. I don't have an easy to follow explanation for merging weapons and hands that works for all kinds of weapons yet, and even if I did, it would only work in Blender, which is what I've been using.
Edit:
I think I may have added the animations into the arm_model qc before doing the definebones recompile to be sure to get all of the bones to appear in the definebones definitions, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I remember there was some warning about non-animating bones getting optimized out (left out).
dr.cube - I'll vote for small/short - when you start on the textures it might be a good idea to slightly singe the front of the guitar
edit - disregard... was using the wrong shortcut
Has anyone decompiled recently? All of a sudden using cannonfodder's mdl decompiler I'm faced with this error: "The proceedure entry point Q_AppendSlash could not be located in the dynamic link library vstdlib.dll."
http://volpinprops.blogspot.com/2010/04/tf2-force-nature.html
As to the coloration, I went with the same gray color used in the other weapons of my pack to keep some sort of cohesion, and to suggest that the parts could have originated from a single tank which was taken apart. Having reddish/bluish tinted treads seems like it might look a little strange. I've already increased the value of the paint, as anything darker was completely indistinguishable in the dark. Dark base color treads would return the team-distinguishing problem.
They have no jigglebones. It was hard enough avoiding clipping into the arms during various animations with my static treads. I had to tweak the rotations on the treads a few times as I discovered additional clipping.
The hedge trimmer I have is pretty old and has a design similar to that (although the guard is a bit smaller on the pic.)
Regarding the link katana posted, that was amazing craftsmanship.
edit: Okay another jigglebone question, according to the Valve Dev Community, jigglebones are assumed to be oriented so that Z runs along the length of the bone, but in max it seems like bones always run along X. Is there any way to change this?
Some WIP pics of a hat I made for the pyro. Model is final.
The lava uses the UnlitTwoTexture shader, which can also be seen on the level 3 dispenser's screen. This gives it a nice flow effect (I did not make a vid yet).
The volcano texture is only a place holder, I really need to make it look like the TF2 rock textures. Also, I'll add some $selfillum for the parts near lava.
Any suggestions on improving?
Should I make it paintable?
Should I try to add a smoke particle effect?
Add a little town at the bottom with paintable roofs. :P
I agree with the small/long.
EDIT: Try adding a lava spewing particle with some smoke in there. Basically just a slightly darker blood particle and some smoke.
The small/short, it match with the size of the guitar
Awesome idea
How could I make my medigun look nicer?
I would put some sort of plug where the wires enter the rings. You have it when the bottom wire enters the base, but it looks kind of weird when they go in the rings. Same goes for the wires going into the center portion from the flaps. You may also want to consider putting something where the rings hit the base, but you may be able to get away with it if you texture it right.
Other than that, it looks pretty sweet.
it is a forage hat from the US civil war.
i would love suggestions on what i can improve and what to use for a emblem on the front.
ZAP!
I don't know if i should model ammo for it.
[ame]
Quality is a little poor, are there better options than Fraps out there?
@ComfyCushion: I love the idea! But i think the model is too plain and simple it needs some tuneup. Go for it!
@Yamo: Just want to say cheers, man! Nice work! Congrat. Hope this will get in!
btw It's my new desktop...lol.